


Your Nightmares Made Real

by coldfiredragon



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BattletheBeast, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Gay Character, F/M, Gay Male Character, Hints of Pennyroyal, Julia and Kady are besties, Julia used the Scarlatti Web on Eliot instead of Quentin, Longer version of a contest entry, M/M, Margo has two boyfriends, Multi, Nightmares, Possible Character Death, Quentin is bi, Time Loop, extensive swearing, loop 39, possible trigger warning: gay converstion therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-10-01 13:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10191359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldfiredragon/pseuds/coldfiredragon
Summary: There was a reason Julia was the element Jane changed in the 40th time loop.  It wasn't something she wanted to do... Julia forced her hand.





	1. Petty Jealousy

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on Wattpad for SyFy's BattleTheBeast fanfic contest. The object was to write how one of the previous 39 time loops failed. The maximum word count was 1500 words, but this fic ran long on the initial typing, so I saved it, and decided to turn it into its own fic. 
> 
> The original title over on Wattpad was 'Petty Jealousy' 
> 
> I'm going to apologize in advance for the ending, because, as I said, this was written as a contest entry, and it ended abruptly to fulfill the challenge. There will be at least a second chapter.

Julia shifted through the loose pages of the spell she had found and mentally translated the Greek more completely. On the surface, the incantation seemed like exactly what she had braved the library to find. The hand positions would be murder to master, and some of the components were rare, but overall it appeared doable. She tucked the pages into one of her books and left the library.

The Physical Cottage was packed upon her return, another of Eliot's insufferable parties, so Julia weaved her way to the steps. She went up the first two and sought out Quentin from the new vantage point. Her best friend was seated between Eliot and Margo. The three were doing shots with half a dozen other students, and it was Q's turn to make a fool of himself. She watched with growing distaste as Quentin picked up a card, failed to adequately pronounce the spell written on it, then throw back a drink. 

The whole group was hammered, and she watched Eliot's arm loop around Quentin's shoulders before retreating to her room. She had just settled on her bed to read the spell more closely when the door opened, and Kady joined her. 

“Did you find anything good?” Julia passed the ancient pages to the other girl and watched her with an impassive face as she translated. “Are you sure we should mess with his dreams? Neither of us likes the guy much, but that seems pretty invasive.”

“Don't be such a wuss. So he has a couple of nightmares. Just imagine what his highness will be like after a few nights without his beauty rest.” A thin smile cracked across Kady's face, and she flipped through the pages again. 

“I know a hedge witch in Brooklyn who can get us most of the stuff we need. We'll just need some sort of magical collateral to trade.” It was Julia's turn to be hesitant. Her only introduction to magic had been through the school and interacting with a magician who chose to act outside the school's careful parameters didn't set well with her. 

“Do you trust her?” Julia let her mind wander as she waited for an answer. Maybe if Eliot hadn't been the first Magician she'd met she would like him more. She remembered how intensely he had regarded her and Quentin when they had arrived, and how easily he had dismissed her.

_“Quentin Coldwater? and, I'm sorry Darling, I don't know your name. Henry didn't tell me you were coming together. That's unusually sloppy of him.”_

_“Julia Wicker. Um, where are we?”_

_“Charmed. Upstate New York. You're at Brakebills University. Both of you, I guess, have been offered a preliminary exam for entry into the graduate program. Follow me, you're late, and you'll miss it.”_

Quentin had clicked with him from that moment on the lawn. It was Eliot who met them after they had been assigned to the new student dorms and he had swept Quentin, only Quentin, into his circle without a second thought. Brakebills was the first time in her life that Julia felt like an outsider, even as she recognized how much it fit to be there. 

Her jealousy of Quentin's new friendships had grown as she realized how quickly magic came to Eliot. She had to work for hours to master a spell, but new spells formed on his hands with a twist of his wrists and impossible flexes of his long fingers. It was like he knew some secret that had unlocked magic for him but refused to share. 

“I don't trust Marina, but she's good for the spell components, and she won't rat us out as long as we give her something good.” Kady was telling her. 

“I'm in, just figure out what she wants.” 

The list of what Marina wanted was long, oddly specific, and took nearly a week to gather. Julia and Kady spent the time learning the spell as thoroughly as they could. Preparing to cast it didn't prepare them for what would happen when they finally performed it. Neither girl had realized it would suck one of them into the dream with him. Nor had they anticipated the depth of the delusion the spell would create. 

At first, Julia hadn't understood what his nightmare was. The placid campground was almost pleasant, and no one seemed to see her, so she explored freely. It hadn't taken her long to figure out it was a conversion therapy camp, meant to look inviting, in the brochure, while being anything but in reality. A tight knot of dread formed in her stomach and finding the Eliot took precedent over finding a way out of the dream world. 

That she had never seen him thinner, completely sober, and so thoroughly broken were her first thoughts when she found him. He reminded her of Quentin when she had gone to visit him during one of his hospital stays; he'd had been too drugged to even realize she was there. 

“E-Eliot?” He flinched at the gentle whisper of his name, but a spark of the man she knew glittered in his eyes when they snapped up a moment later. 

“What the fuck did you do to me?” The ease with which he had figured out her fault made the knot turn to a lead weight. She was going to get expelled for this.

“It was supposed to be a joke, a prank, I... I just thought you would have trouble sleeping.” 

“You crafted a prison for my mind out of my nightmares.” He wrapped his arms around his legs and hid his face against his knees. “I thought this was real.” His whole body shuddered. 

“I-I'm sorry, please Eliot.” 

“You're only sorry you got caught. If you cared about me, you wouldn't have done this. I don't want to remember what they did to me here, let alone relive it when I'm asleep. I was a kid when my parents dumped me here. What did I do that was so horrible to you anyway?” Julia felt tears track down her face. All the reasoning she had put behind her plan felt flat and useless now. 

“Just wake up.” She told him.

“I can't, Julia.” His voice held hints of panic, and more frightening, resignation. “Whatever you did is trapping me here.” He pulled his legs tighter to his chest. “Please don't leave.” The words were barely audible. “I don't know if I can convince myself it isn't real.” 

“I'll fix it! I'll wake you up.” Julia promised fervently, she wanted to shake him, to tell him not to let this horrible thing she had created bury him before she could get him out of it, but she doubted he wanted her to touch him. Her hands formed fists, and she closed her eyes, trying to imagine Kady's hands in hers, trying to anchor herself to something outside the spell. Mercifully it worked, and her room came into focus. Her whole body tingled, and it probably would have felt amazing if she didn't know what she had done. 

“Jules? Why are you crying? What happened?” 

“We did something wrong.” Her voice was hoarse, and she wiped at her eyes. Her legs wobbled as she stood to wrench open the bedroom door. Early morning light filtered through the cottage windows as she darted down the hall to Eliot's room. Thankfully there was no one else to disturb as she threw herself onto the bed and patted his cheek, when that didn't work she shook him. “Eliot wake up.” She tried a spell to wake him, but it had no effect.

“What went wrong?” Kady demanded. 

“We have to wake him up. It wasn't a dream, it was, I don't, it was worse.... I...”

“Jules, Kady? What are you guys doing in here?” Julia's horrified gaze slipped to the door where Quentin had appeared; the towel slung over his shoulder told her he'd gotten up early to shower. 

“I didn't mean to hurt him, Q. I swear.” Quentin sat on the other side of Eliot's bed. One hand searched for a pulse and the other cupped his friend's face. 

“This isn't funny, El. Wake up. What did you do, Julia? We should take him to the infirmary.” 

“We need to get the dean. Right now!” Kady interrupted. “We don't know how that spell went wrong.” 

“What spell?” Quentin snapped. “Nevermind, I'll get him. You can tell him what you did yourself.” He tossed the towel away and headed out of the bedroom at almost a run. 

“Tell me what happened!” Kady demanded when they were alone. 

“We didn't trigger a nightmare, we trapped him in one.” Julia couldn't look at Kady, so she watched Eliot instead. The rapid eye moment behind his closed lids made her queasy. Eventually, Quentin and the dean returned, a second professor accompanied them. The older man looked none to happy and his scowl deepened as he cast a series of spells. 

“The spell you used is called a Scarlatti web. Did you know we would be unable to break it when you cast it?” 

“What? No! I wasn't trying to hurt him. There has to be something we can do.” 

“Professor Lee and I will have to lower the wards to summon a Matarese. Kady, fetch Penny. Do it quickly. Julia, I want that spell, now.” 

“Yes, sir.” Julia felt numb as she stumbled into the hall. Kady ran for the stairs.

“Julia? What's going on?” The commotion had woken Alice and Margo. The younger woman followed Julia to her room while the elder crept towards her best friend's room in shocked silence. Quentin pulled her into a one-armed embrace in the doorway of Eliot's bedroom. Throughout the house pale white lines of magic started to glow. The spell pages were where Julia had left them, but the ink shifted as she leafed through them. 

“These aren't right!” She cried in frustration. An entirely mundane spell was taking the place of the complex one she and Kady had performed. She took the pages back to the dean anyway. Penny had appeared in her absence, and the dean was giving him quiet instructions as he and Professor Lee worked the wards. “Something's wrong!” The dean left Professor Lee to continue and snatched the pages from her hands. 

“If this is some idea of a joke Julia...”

“It... it's, not sir,” Alice told him softly. “The spell was changing when we got to her room. I don't think she did this.”

“Thank you Alice. Everyone out, please. So Professor Lee and I have space to work.” 

“I'm not leaving.” Margo proclaimed. At some point, Quentin had guided her into the bedroom and pulled her down with him into an armchair that sat in the corner. She raised her chin defiantly and glared back at the dean when his attention shifted to her. Their gazes locked for a moment until finally, Margo's eyes dropped and turned to Eliot “Please.” She added, and her voice wavered just a little. “We won't get in the way.” Quentin's arm tightened around her waist, and he pulled her closer to him.

“Fine.” Fogg grated out gruffly. “The two of you may stay.” His gaze shifted around the room and he started giving orders. “Alice you have classes. Go, now before you are late.” The blond hesitated, then nodded and scurried from sight. “Julia, Kady, you cast this mess.” He grabbed a sketch pad from the dresser and tossed it into Julia's hands. “Recreate it. Word for word. It must be exact.” 

“The spell was in greek!” Julia almost shouted. 

“Then the two of you had better have goddamn good memories. Work in the common room. Don't leave the cottage.” The girls nodded silently and disappeared. 

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” Penny asked from his place against the wall. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he looked like he wanted to be anywhere else. 

“Once the wards are dropped, and the Matarese has been summoned I hope you will be able to lead Eliot out of the mental prison the spell created. 

“And then he'll be okay, right?” Margo interrupted. 

“Then he will have a chance to wake up, I can't promise he will.” The response left Margo in stunned silence, which Fogg used as permission to go back to working on the wards. It had taken nearly an hour before Julia returned with several pages of spell-work. 

“We think we got it right.” Fogg nodded and stepped closer to examine the papers. 

“Henry!” Professor Lee's warning came too late. All at once the wards fell away and as soon as the last one dropped a flame tinted smiley face slowly formed in the center of the new pages. Julia screamed as the things combusted in her hands. In seconds there was nothing left but ash caking her fingers and soot blackening her hands. 

“This was a trick from the beginning.” Fogg looked furious. “He knew I would lower the wards if I had to summon a Matarese.”

“Who? What the hell is going on?” Quentin demanded. 

“The Beast.” 

“Why does the Beast want us dead? How did he know my name that morning?” . 

“We don't have time for this conversation now, so I will give you the short version. The Beast is from Fillory.” The dean cut Quentin off with a glare before he could open his mouth. “He wants you dead because he believes you will eventually be the ones to destroy him.” 

“Eventually?” Julia asked. 

“We are stuck in a time loop that resets with Quentin's death.” The dean informed her. “Every loop something changes in a vain hope to shift the odds.” 

“So this is just some horrible, blood-soaked 'Groundhog's Day'?” Quentin offered, leave it to him to make an inappropriate reference. Both Dean Fogg and Julia glared at him. 

“You always bring up that fucking movie.” 

“How many times has this happened?” Margo asked, valiantly trying to keep the conversation on track.

“Thirty-nine.” The Dean told the stunned group. Without warning, every window in the cottage shattered at once. Thankfully the rest of the physical kids had all gone to class when they realized the Dean was in their house. Moths poured in through the splintered panes, and a well-dressed man stepped through Eliot's full-length mirror. He snapped his fingers, and everyone froze. 

“Thank you, Henry. You managed to make an impossible situation sound almost mundane.” His attention shifted from the Dean to Julia. “Julia, my dear you were most helpful this go around. I should reward you!” He advanced on her and brushed the knuckles of one six-fingered hand down her cheek. “I'll kill you first, so you won't watch the rest die. “Don't worry, it will be quick.” His hand grabbed her throat and twisted.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once the Beast is temporarily driven back Penny helps Eliot escape the Scarlatti web, but the spell has a tighter grip on him than expected and Penny turns to a drastic solution to snap him out of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back for chapter 2! I wasn't sure we'd get here, but I finally figured out a way to write around the one-shot everyone dies and the loop ends, ending that that this fic originally had. 
> 
> Read the tags. I didn't want to be graphic, but this chapter fleshes out Eliot's nightmare a little more completely. It might be triggery for some.

The Beast yanked Julia off her feet and into the air. She hung there helpless as his hand twisted closed. Black spots danced along the edge of her vision.

“Julia!” Kady's scream and the deafening crack of a battle magic spell fired in a confined space broke the Beast's concentration as he was thrown backward into the mirror he'd stepped through. All of them could move again, and Julia dropped into a crumpled pile as she coughed. Bits of glass from the shattered window pressed into her palms and knees.

“Well done, Kady.” The Dean turned his attention to the mirror and waved his hands over it. The thing, frame and all, shimmered with light and caved in on itself, before blinking from existence entirely. “Summon the Matarese.” He ordered to professor Lee. “If he wasn't heavily injured he will try to come back. The wards can't stay down for a prolonged period.”

“Right, Henry, of course.” Beside him, Julia rose unsteadily to her feet. Drops of blood dripped from between her fingers, and she winced as glass sliced her bare feet as she tried to tiptoe out of the room. 

“Jesus, Julia.” Kady helped her through the last of it and glanced at the Dean as Julia's arm wrapped around her neck. His gaze settled on the two of them, and he seemed to be debating if he should let them out of his sight or not. 

“Quentin, Margo, let Julia have the chair, please.” They gave up their spot, and Julia gratefully sank into the cushions. She watched as Fogg performed fast, precise healing charms over her hands and feet. “Get cleaned up.” He ordered once he'd finished. “And wait downstairs. This isn't over, so don't think for a second you won't be punished.”

“That thing tried to kill all of us, and you're still going to punish me? That's bullshit!” 

“What's bullshit, Miss Wicker, is that I had to lower the school wards because you tried to prank Eliot without truly knowing the spell you cast. You put everyone's lives at risk because you were petty. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Julia agreed softly. The knowledge that she'd probably gotten both herself and Kady expelled made her heart heavy. Her eyes tracked to Quentin, but his gaze was fixed on Eliot's still form like he could will him awake if he stared long enough. She glanced toward Eliot and watched his eyes move behind tightly closed lids. She'd read a little bit about conversion therapy for one of her ethics classes. If she had put him through any of that, even mentally, maybe she did deserve to be expelled. 

“I never wanted any of this.” She gestured around the room, to the broken glass on the floor, and Professor Lee, who had produced a little cage from somewhere and had created a small summoning circle on Eliot's bedside table. 

“I would certainly hope not.” Fogg agreed. 

“Come on,” Kady muttered softly. “There are too many people in here.” 

\----------------------------------

Margo waited for Julia and Kady to leave before whispering a spell to get rid of the blood that had dripped onto Eliot's chair. When she was done with that, she fixed the window. 

“Margo you don't have to do any of this,” Quentin told her quietly.

“Shut up, Quentin.” She snapped as loudly as she dared. She had to do something until Eliot woke up. He had to; she couldn't think about what could happen if he didn't. 

“Margo...”

“He might not wake up, Quentin!”

“This isn't my fault!”

“She's your friend!” 

“Both of you sit down and shut the fuck up!” The Dean snapped at them. “I'm very generous to let you stay, don't test me.” 

“Yes, sir.” They chorused at the same time. Margo followed Quentin back to the chair and reluctantly curled up in his lap. After a moment of having his arms around her, she relaxed a little. It wasn't Q she was mad at, just the helplessness she felt. 

“What did Julia do, exactly?” Quentin asked when he got brave enough to speak again. “You mentioned a 'mental prison' to Penny earlier.” The Dean's arms crossed over his chest, and he frowned at the two of them. 

“The spell is called a Scarlatti Web. It takes personal memories and uses them to create a continuous dream. The mind might not believe it's real at first, but over time the affected individual's psyches are twisted into believing that it is. It's notoriously difficult to break once it sets in.”

“It's ready, Henry.” The four of them all turned eyes to Eliot and watched as Professor Lee rested what looked like a clock-work scorpion made of gold or brass on Eliot's cheek. The Dean stepped forward and started to chant a spell as the other professor performed the hand motions. Margo squeezed her eyes shut as the thing crawled down her best friend's throat.

“So now we just wait?” She asked when she could form words without gagging. 

“The spell has temporarily shut down Eliot's cerebral cortex, which should help break him out of the spell, but he'll have better odds with a guide. Penny?” 

“Yeah, I'm up. I get it.” Penny moved to sit on Eliot's bed. He shifted into a pose he was comfortable meditating in, then let his eyes close as he tried to astral project into Eliot's mind. The other man's wards were being suppressed by the spell the Dean had cast, and he found himself on the grounds of a quiet wooded retreat. 

If this was supposed to be a nightmare hellscape, it was certainly well disguised. That was probably the point though. If Eliot were meant to stay here, he'd be more likely to want to stay if it was pleasant. Penny walked through the main lobby of the lodge and stopped to stare at a young man seated in one of the chairs. 

The guy was their age, in fact, he was someone Penny knew from one of his classes. He was repeatedly snapping the elastic band around his wrist against the skin. Even from across the room Penny could see that the skin had become an angry, irritated red. There was an identical line of marks on the other wrist.

“Shit!” Penny muttered under his breath. “Julia, you little bitch.” He didn't think she'd planned this, at least he hoped she wasn't secretly that malicious, but if these were Eliot's memories then there was a high chance he'd see much worse than a guy snapping a band against his wrist. 

“Eliot!” Penny brought his hands to his mouth to funnel the sound and flexed his fingers to amplify his voice, but there wasn't magic to manipulate. He jogged down the hallways, past classrooms full of guys he recognized from the school. It figured that Eliot's mental mindscape would be populated by people he knew in real life. Penny wondered how many of them he'd dated. He wondered if there were versions of himself and Quentin. 

The classrooms ended, and Penny pushed open a set of double doors that lead to dormitories. Most of the rooms were open, save one, was padlocked shut. He stared at the lock in disbelief. With magic, he could have blasted it free with ease. He walked back down the hall, glancing into each small bare bedroom until he found one that looked like it belonged to a someone with some authority. Maybe it was a supervisor's room, or a hall monitor, who fucking knew? He started digging through the desk and found a key-ring in one of the drawers. There were over a dozen small padlock keys, and Penny hoped one of them worked. 

He jogged back to the locked bedroom and tossed both the lock and keys away when he found the right combination. Metal skidded against linoleum somewhere behind him as he turned the knob and yanked the door open. Eliot was curled in the corner of his bed with his ankles crossed and his knees held tight against his chest. Someone had taken his shoes. Wary, wide amber eyes darted upward to stare at him through dark unruly curls.

“You're going to get us both trouble when they found at you took the keys.” He told Penny, in a tone that was as resigned and miserable as he looked.

“This is all in your head, Eliot! Snap out of it. You're trapped in a spell. This shit isn't real.”

“Magic isn't real, Penny. You sound like Q when he talks about his Fillory books.” Penny knew he didn't imagine the undeniable fondness for Quentin as Eliot talked about him. 

“You're unconscious, and this is some bullshit nightmare Julia cooked up!”

“Get out of my room, you asshole! Don't you get it? You're going to get caught in here!

“You've got to be fucking kidding me!” Penny locked his fingers behind his head and turned his back to Eliot as he stood in the hallway. How was he supposed to convince Eliot that he was in control? The Matarese should have broken the illusion. His eyes landed on the padlock he'd haphazardly tossed down the hall, and he walked to pick it up. He yanked the keys free and moved back into the open door frame. 

“I'm not lying to you.” He tossed the padlock up into the air to test its weight. It was heavy; it would hurt if it hit. Penny notched his arm back, ready to throw the metal piece as hard as he could.

“What the fuck, Penny?” Eliot's voice took on a slight pitch of panic. 

“You have magic! Use it!” Penny threw the lock towards Eliot's head with all the strength he could muster. Eliot yelped and tucked his head down, with his arms thrown up to protect himself. The lock shot towards him and froze in midair about four inches from Eliot's hands. When it didn't impact wide amber eyes shot upward to stare at it. 

“Fuck.” His fingers trembled as he reached to touch it. The light experimental flick had the lock spinning in midair. “That little bitch.” He raked shaking fingers through his hair and sniffed, then rubbed his hard at his temple with two fingers. “No, no,...!” Before Penny could move, he was thrown backward by a wave of telekinetic energy. It slammed him into the wall. The lock shot like a bullet through the plaster and the brick.

“Penny!” Penny heard the slap of bare feet as Eliot ran across the hall to drop to his knees beside him.

“I'm all right.” 

“What the hell did she cast on me?”

“Dean Fogg said it's a Scarlatti web.” He watched Eliot go pale. The young man seemed to shrink in on himself. 

“So I'm trapped here for the rest of my life.” Eliot murmured. 

“They summoned a Matarese, but I don't know what happened to it.

“A mata...” Unexpectedly, Eliot gagged as the thing finally clawed its way out of his throat. It scurried around his cheek, down his neck, and over his shoulder. Eliot shot to his feet with surprising grace and raised his arm to look at the thing as it settled on the back of his hand. 

“Well hello there.” It was the first time since Penny had dove into Eliot's subconscious that Eliot sounded like himself. He offered Penny his hand and Penny allowed him to help him up. What he didn't expect was for was for Eliot to push him up against the wall and kiss him. It was a great kiss, but Penny only had seconds to process it before the world went black and he was pushed out of Eliot's mind. 

He jolted to awareness and glanced down at Eliot's still form. He hadn't so much as stirred. Margo surged from the chair and dropped down on the bed across from Penny.

“So it didn't work?” She reached to pet a loose curl behind Eliot's ear. “What else can we try?”

“What happened?” Dean Fogg demanded as Penny got up. Quentin slipped silently out of the chair to take his spot on the bed. 

“Everything went dark, and I got pushed out. He should have woken up.” 

“What else can we try?” Margo shouted. 

“Nothing!” Fogg snapped.

“You can't leave him like that!” Penny told the man. “You can't, it's, you. This is fucking bullshit.” He would have continued to rant, but Eliot jerked onto his side and got one arm under himself for support before he started to cough. The Matarese ejected from his throat, and Professor Lee's hand shot out to collect it. 

“El.” Quentin was the one sitting on the side Eliot had rolled towards, and Eliot launched himself up and into the other man's embrace. His arms went tight around Quentin's torso, and he buried his face against his friend's throat. Small silent shuddering sobs shook his frame. Quentin held him back, and Margo scooted closer to pet his hair. They shared a bewildered look. Henry reached for a bottle of whiskey that sat on Eliot's far dresser and moved it so it to the nightstand.

“The spell is broken. He'll be alright. Make sure he gets some of that once he's calmed down.” He told Margo.” 

“Yes, sir.” She agreed. 

“Professor Lee, collect the rest of the staff. I want the base layer of wards back up as soon as possible. We can reinforce them from there.” The two of walked out of the room together. Penny watched Eliot shudder between his friends for a moment before jogging after the Dean. Professor Lee had disappeared, but Fogg was taking time to repair the upstairs windows. 

“So what happens now?” He demanded, meaning what happened to Julia and Kady. 

“I'll consult the rest of the staff once the wards are fixed, and decide appropriate punishments for Julia and Kady.” 

“You can't expel them! That thing is still out there!” 

“I am far more aware of the situation than all of you are. I know all of you have questions, but right now the safety of this school is my immediate concern. 

“What she did to him is unforgivable.” 

“I understand that there is a personal bias. You side with Eliot and Kady, but not Julia. I have to consider that Kady was equal parts responsible for casting the spell. Regardless of fault, I won't make a decision now.” Penny followed him down the cottage steps. Julia and Kady had already repaired the downstairs windows. 

“Is he okay?” Julia demanded. 

“You are fortunate he woke up. Both of you come with me. You'll wait in my office while I help the rest of the staff restore the wards.” The two women nodded and followed him from the cottage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love opinions, thoughts, and commentary! Kudos are welcome and encouraged!
> 
> This fic is going to get a short epilogue where Henry and Jane talk before Henry decides Julia's punishment, and that will be the final chapter. I hope everyone enjoyed it!

**Author's Note:**

> I promise it isn't ending that this! Don't throw things at me!


End file.
